


What does the fox say?

by pandapresident



Category: XOXO Droplets (Video Game)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2020-01-16 03:35:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18513082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pandapresident/pseuds/pandapresident
Summary: What could make Everett risk his carefully constructed cool persona? Turns out it's two doofuses that are as dumb as he is.(Rating for uncensored cursing.)





	What does the fox say?

“Ice Blue!” Lucas said, leaping to his feet and waving his arms in the air. “You made it!”

“Shhh!” Everett hissed, furtively glancing behind his giant sunglasses to see if anyone had spotted him. “No-one can know I’m here.”

His attempt at stealth might have been more successful had he not swaddled himself in a giraffe print coat, an item owned by roughly no-one else in the history of ever. Luckily for Everett, he had vastly overestimated how much anyone cared or how much attention they would spend on him compared to his company.

“Why don’t you want anyone to know you’re here?” Rex asked, as if he was not presently dressed as a fox. And yet, from the tips of his fuzzy, pointy ears to the whiskers drawn on his cheeks to the puffy white-tipped tail, he was dressed as a fox.

“You’re not ashamed to be seen with us, are you?” Lucas asked, as though he were not also dressed as a fox, in a public place, in broad daylight. And yet this was most definitely the case, although some of less sophisticated passers-by might have mistaken him for a squirrel. Species aside, there was no denying that he and Rex were in matching animal costumes, and this small matter not gone unnoticed by the general public.

“Ugh!” Everett groaned in response. He pushed his sunglasses higher up his nose. Clearly, no-one had a chance of recognising him if his eyes were obscured from view. It was a tactic that had worked just fine for Superman, after all. Whether Clark Kent would have been so successful if he had uniquely shaved brows and a distinctive haircut, plus a frankly singular sense of style, was not something that had occurred to Everett to ponder. He was too busy wrestling with a camera that he’d bagged from the theatre nerds. It was amazing what people would give you if you just threatened to get Nate over to explain why you needed it. Luckily, no-one ever called his bluff: Nate would not have approved of this or ninety percent of the other times he’d used that line. “Let’s just get on with it.”

“Hells yeah,” Rex said, grinning and throwing his immaculately manicured hands into devil horns.

Everett had, naively, assumed that recreating a music video would require some sort of music, or singing, or dancing, but Rex and Lucas assured him that they could just edit their “sick parkour” to fit the beat. He did convince them to get a few shots where they did something that could, generously, be described as dancing, and hours later they had plenty of footage. There was even a chance that some of it might be usable.

And yet something was missing from their music video. Rex know it. Lucas knew it. Everett also knew it, but he was thinking along very different lines to his collaborators.

“We need a horse,” Rex said, scuffing his limited-edition sneakers along the ground.

“Yeah!” Lucas said, his eyes alight. “That’s what we’re missing!”

“Really?” Everett said, still filming. “That’s what you’re worried about?”

“It’s a key part of the song,” Lucas said.

“I know that,” Everett scoffed. “You played it, what, thirty times to me already?”

“Is it too late to rent a horse?” Rex asked.

“There’s gotta be some horse-nerds at school,” Everett said. “We can borrow one.”

“Would they trust us with their beloved horse?” Lucas asked.

The trio considered. Everett had to concede that perhaps, if someone’s best friend and extremely valuable equine was on the line, people might decide to risk asking Nate directly if he really needed to borrow their horse. It was just a short tumble from there to all of Everett’s other ruses being found out.  

“So, renting one?” Rex said, reaching into his fursuit to retrieve his phone. His arm got jammed halfway down his chest and refused to get any further, no matter how hard he jumped around and swore. “Why didn’t we get costumes with pockets?!”

“Foxes don’t have pockets,” Lucas said, sagely.

“Everett?”

“Mm?”

“Can you Google horse rentals?”

“Firstly: I’m not Siri or your servant,” Everett said. “Secondly.” He pulled his flip-phone out. “No, Rex, I cannot Google that or anything else, because I haven’t sold my soul to the devil.”

“But we need a hooooorse,” Rex whined.

Everett rolled his eyes and was about to say something pithy and witty that would launch a thousand memes when he spotted something. Something that solved all their problems, watered their crops, cleansed their skin, etc. He had found their horse.

(But everything comes with a price and the comeback that Everett absolutely, most definitely, had at the ready, was the price paid for this serendipity. The internet was surely a poorer and less funny place for this great loss to humanity.)

He put a finger to his lips, then pointed to their target. Puzzled, Lucas and Rex sought out what he’d spotted. Realisation spread slowly across Lucas’s face and Rex snorted with laughter.

“Be stealthy,” Everett hissed, readying the camera. “We’ll only get one go at this shot.”

 

 

Pran had been having a relatively not-awful day. He’d whiled away the morning with Jeremy. His friend had spent half of that time asleep but since this had very little impact on the number of words exchanged between them Pran had still counted it as quality time. After being cooped up for so long he’d felt like getting some fresh air, so he’d climbed out of Jeremy’s bedroom window and barely touched the ground since. Now he was nestled in the branches of a tree, blissfully alone and untroubled by the awful people that plagued this town.

He retrieved an apple from a pocket and rubbed it on his shirt. Jeremy had told him that doing that did less than nothing for any bacteria that might be residing on the fruit. “If anything, you’re increasing the number of germs,” Jeremy had said. Pran didn’t care. He liked polishing the waxy skin up to a perfect sheen before biting in and destroying the apple. 

“Ring-ding-ding-ding-dingeringeding!”

He started. The apple slipped from his fingers and smashed on the ground below. Furious, he sought out the source of the startling noise. He didn’t know what to expect from such a terrible noise, but it would never have been the sight before him: that posh guy who pretended to be tough at school, dressed as some sort of awful abomination while crouching in the grass below. Pran wished he again that he hadn’t dropped the fruit; he could have used it as a projectile.

“Wa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pow!” screeched someone else. Pran turned to find that terrible guy who stalked Jeremy and JB. For some reason, he was also dressed as something, and he was on all fours.

Pran did not know what was going on but he knew that he did not want any of it. He climbed along the branch and leapt onto the next tree.

“Hatee-hatee-hatee-ho!” rich guy howled, dashing after Pran.

There was laughter. Pran spun around, his white locks swinging dramatically, and saw Everett clutching a camera and his sides. Pran realised that should he have known that the day would end up being awful. It was all that he deserved, after all.

“Joff-tchoff-tchoffo-tchoffo-tchoff!” the stalking creature screeched.

Pran made a tactical retreat to the only person who could understand the horrors he had faced without needing him to relive them by speaking the ordeal back into existence. Jeremy would understand, even if Pran didn’t.

 

 

“You’ve got to see this,” Everett said, for the hundredth time that day. He seized someone else’s phone (again, for the hundredth time) and brought up a video.

Absolutely no-one he showed was expecting a remake of “What Does the Fox Say” in this, the year of our lord 20xx, and yet that was forced in front of their eyes. They also had not been expecting to see Rex, leader of the Troublemakers and some guy, both dressed as foxes, alternating between parkour and off-beat dancing. But what was most surprising was that, when they snorted with derisive laughter and looked to Everett for the same, they found he was watching it with poorly-disguised adoration.

“It’s…really…” the latest victim of this stunt said, hoping to prompt Everett into coming back to his senses. Thankfully, they were saved from having to find an adjective by Everett spotting someone else he vaguely recognised.

“Check this out!” he said, shoving the phone (that was not his) in front of their face and forcing them to watch it.

“No, thank you,” Waldo said, ducking under Everett’s outstretched arm and continuing on his merry way. “I had really rather not.”

“Yeah, well, fuck you!” Everett said, and went to find more victims. The phone’s owner chased after him.

“There are better ways to announce your relationship,” Nate said, as Everett pulled this stunt for the hundred-and-twenty-second time.

“You think?” Everett said, not taking his eyes from the video playing out again. For once, he thought that Nate might have been wrong about something. Then he remembered who he was thinking about. Nate was never wrong about anything. This was not the best way to announce his relationship.

 

 

The mood in the room was tense. Nate’s jaw was set tight; he had too much to do to waste time with a sudden group meeting. Shiloh was pretending to be happy about the situation, but how he really felt was a mystery. Bae was similarly maintaining an air of good grace, but his sarcastic remarks had a more bitter twang than usual. Jeremy moped. Pran brooded. All in all, it was par for the course, right down to JB running late, except Everett was in unusually high spirits.

“Finally,” he said, as JB burst in.

“Yeeees, we’ve all been just dying to hear what little announcement is coming this time.”

“Announcement?” JB repeated, looking mystified.

“It isn’t about you?” Jeremy asked.

“It’s always about me,” JB said.

“This is not about JB,” said Lynn.

“Aw,” JB said.

“Oh, good!” Shiloh said. “I was so worried; it seemed just like that time she announced she was dating Kam-“

“And the time she announced she was dating Adrian,” Bae said. “Sometimes I think you date people just to see our reactions, twinkle.”

“Hey,” Everett said, scowling. “Didn’t you assholes hear? It’s not about JB, so let’s stop talking about her.”

“I don’t mind,” JB said.

“That doesn’t matter. This meeting isn’t about you.” Everett smirked. “It’s about me.”

Nate cast his eyes up to the heavens. He would have crossed his arms over his chest in his usual defensive stance, but he’d already taken that position fifteen minutes ago.

“This was not what I had in mind,” he said.

“Ahahaha, what could you possibly have to announce?” Bae asked.

“That I’m better and more desirable than anyone else here,” Everett said. “Because I have two boyfriends and you are all single.”

“Boyfriends?” Jeremy repeated.

“Two?” Shiloh asked.

“That’s right, I’m seeing Rex and Lucas.”

JB sniffed and pretended to wipe away a tear. “Everett, baby, I’m so proud of you-“

“No, you can’t join in.”

“Aw. I’m still proud of you, man.”

“I’m soooo happy Everett found love with his intellectual equals,” Bae said. “Can we go now?”

“No,” Everett said. “You spend way more time than this when JB does her announcements. I’m owed another three minutes at least.”

“That’s because they get jealous,” JB said.

“Of coooourse we do.”

“JB is not the topic here! I am.”

“Your boyfriends are awful and so are you.”

“My boyfriends are great and so am I.”

“I can’t believe that Pran didn’t hallucinate that event,” Jeremy said. Pran scowled. “What? It wouldn’t have been the first time.”

“It was the middle of the day.”

“It would still have been traumatic, even if you had only imagined it. In fact, I’m surprised that you didn’t need to go take something to cleanse your brain after that.”

Pran seemed placated by this.

“The topic is me, people!”

“I’m going to be monitoring your grades for fluctuations,” Nate said. “If your GPA takes a dip greater than .5 you’re breaking up with both of them.”

“Fuck that noise!”

“Hm,” Shiloh said, pretending to consider this proposal. “What if it’s a variation of .25? Does he only have to break up with one of them?”

“Don’t give him ideas!”

“If his GPA drops by .125 he should break up with half of one of them,” Jeremy said. Everett did not like the grin on his clown face, not one bit.

“Which half?” Bae asked.

“Whichever half he’s most interested in.”

“Everett, are you an abs guy or a butt guy?” JB asked.

“All right,” Lynn said. “I think we’re going to end it there. Everyone, thank you for coming.”

“Yeah,” Everett said, grinning. “Thanks for coming along to hear about how I’m so great that two people want to date me and you’re all still alone.”

“This meeting is over,” Lynn said, more firmly.

They began to file out of the room. Nate placed a hand on Everett’s shoulder, keeping him back from the others. Everett mouthed, “Help me,” to JB, but she only grinned and pretended to be very interested in what Bae had to say. Everett glared at her fickle, retreating back, then turned to Nate.

“Heeey, best bud,” Everett said.

Nate was not appeased.

“I’m not kidding about the GPA.”

Everett signed. Of course he wasn’t.


End file.
